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Abstract
AutoCAD has been used for decades. Many AutoCAD users still use AutoCAD as a replacement for manual drafting. There are many new features added in AutoCAD. Combining them all and create a drawing system will maximize team collaboration and ensure standard drawings. Drawing is not just about how fast you finish it. It is also, about how easy we can modify it during the design process. In addition, how we can make use of the data. We can also create some automatisation. We can use fields for title blocks. Also creating schedule using data extraction for example. I hope this eBook can be useful for you who interested in developing drawing system for AutoCAD
We need to create and manage standard blocks for our drawings. Every time your engineer or draftsman needs to create typical drawings, they simply access the standard content, and place them to their drawing. Why do we need to create a standard content for the company? First, it will increase your productivity by avoiding recreating drawings over and over again. Second, it will not look good if people draw their own blocks. The drawings came from the same company. Why do they look different?
MANAGING BLOCKS
Creating blocks is covered in most AutoCAD trainings and books. Creating blocks is very basic, I believe most of AutoCAD users can create blocks. The problem is how to manage them. In the past, we saw people create one file for one block using WBLOCK command. They put the blocks in separate folders for different categories. When they need the block, they can insert that file as a block Let us see some sample from AutoCAD.
In design center folder, you will see some sample files. They contain several similar blocks in one file. I prefer to use this method than having one file for each block. The advantages are: It is easier to manage than having hundreds of files. You cannot save dynamic block behavior by inserting it as a file. Unless you insert it as nested block and explode it after insertion. It is also easier for us to create tool palettes from your blocks. We will get to this later.
DYNAMIC BLOCKS
Autodesk introduced dynamic block in AutoCAD 2006. It is a good feature, but must handle with extra caution. Block is a library. The idea is having a block but can represent your objects in different ways. You may need them at different sizes, different shapes, etc. This example shows that we can have one block, and represent it in many ways. We can flip it, rotate it and maintain the text orientation. Chapter: Creating Reusable Content
So what is the downside? The problem is when you need to create a report with data extraction. Imagine you created a block definition for a door. You add some functionality so you can resize the door width. We have the same block name, but they actually different door type. When we create a door schedule with data extraction, if you are not careful, the schedule will list the blocks as one door type. Your schedule will show incorrect numbers. So it is useless? No. You can still report the door with the same name, but you need to show additional information such as the door width or column size.
We can do this by defining the parameters name in block editor. This is an example for column size.
If you do not change the parameter name, you can still show them in your schedule. Of course, it will be like Distance1, Distance2, and so on. They do not look pretty, and practically useless. You can read several tutorials about creating dynamic block on my blog. If you are interested, here are they.
Dynamic Block Tutorial #1: Creating Wall Dynamic Block Tutorial #2: Creating Column. Dynamic Block Tutorial #3: Creating Door Dynamic Block Tutorial #4: Adding More Actions
The other advantage using wipeout, we still can calculate the whole wall length. Because its not actually cut. We can count how many openings on the walls separately. If you draw P&ID, you might want to add align action to your blocks. There are a lot of action you can use in AutoCAD to optimize your blocks! If you are interested to discuss about this more, I will be glad to do so. As long as you let me to share the tricks on my blog.
PALETTES
What are tool palettes? Snipped from help file: Tool palettes are used to manage blocks, hatches, and other custom tools. You can activate palette from View tab, palettes panel on your AutoCAD ribbon. Choose tool palette.
If you see the palettes are included with AutoCAD installation, you will see a collection of blocks, hatches, and some other tools. This is a great way to your own workspace. In addition, it does not require a lot of work and programming knowledge. You can access your blocks quickly, without having to use insert tool, find where your blocks are. It is just a click away.
Its not just blocks that can be managed by palettes. You can manage lines with different line type, line scale, etc dimension with different dimension styles, hatches with different scales, etc. Thats what I love about tool palette: simple but powerful. Take a look at this example, I use 2 icon on palette to manage same pattern, but different scale. We dont have to activate hatch, find the pattern type, or make adjustment to hatch scale. Simply two clicks: activate, and click on your objects boundary.
Figure 10 - Tool Palettes can hold hatch information, including its scale
Creating tool palettes is very simple. You can create a new tab, and drag all your blocks, lines, hatches here.
DESIGN CENTER
Snipped from help file: With DesignCenter, you can organize access to drawings, blocks, hatches, and other drawing content. Design Center is just like Windows explorer. The difference is, you can see what is inside an AutoCAD file. Open your design center by clicking the button on view tab, palettes panel. Or simply press [ctrl] + 2.
You can find layers, blocks, dimstyles, etc. If you want to use it, simply drag and drop it to your drawing. If you have not defined your template, this is very useful to selectively import styles, layers, and blocks to your template from your existing drawing. One more advantage that I want to emphasize: You can easily create tool palettes using design center. Try to find some block library in design center sample. For example, house designer.dwg. Right click on the file name, select create tool palette. What happen? Look at your tool palette. You will have a new tab named house designer. As I mention before, we can have some advantages if we put our similar blocks within one file. This is one of it.
Most common setup in templates is layers, styles, and layouts. You can add them just like you draw as usual. You do not need to draw objects. Consider to use standard layer names, fonts type, and size. You also need to define several layouts with different paper size. Include If you already have some drawings that you consider as standard, you can use them. Do you remember that you can drag and drop layers, styles, and layouts from those files? Yes, you can use design center.
What is text field? A field is text that contains instructions to display data that you expect to change during the life cycle of the drawing. You can make some use from text field for many types of data. Object perimeter, area, etc. Since we are talking about templates, we emphasize on typical data in drawings. Let us take title block as example. We put information such as drawn by, file name, date, and other information required. During the design process, the information might be changed. By using text field, the information will be updated automatically. It update automatically when you plot, save or regenerate your drawing. Chapter: Preparing Templates Edwin Prakoso www.cad-notes.com
There are a lot of information you can use. You can use Windows credential (Windows login identity) to show who plot your drawing. When the drawing plotted. Almost everything! Because it will be automatically updated, you dont need to worry there are some value left unchanged. And of course, faster than you update them manually.
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You have set your starting point. If you have different type of standard, you need to create several templates. For example, for architectural drawing, for MEP drawing, or for civil drawing. So how to use template? If you use file>new menu, AutoCAD will ask you which template do you want to use. Unfortunately, AutoCAD doesnt ask us for new files created with QNEW command, and file created when we run AutoCAD. You can define template for QNEW, but that would be limited to one template only. There is one feature that I love to use for this situation. The startup dialog. This feature was disabled by default. If you have used older AutoCAD, you might have seen it as it was enabled by default. You can select the working unit, or select a template to start your drawing.
You can enable this feature by changing the STARTUP system variable to 1.
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CONFIGURATION
You can configure your CAD standard in manage tab, CAD Standards panel.
In opened dialog box, you can add your cad standard files. Your active drawing will be continuously compared to this dws. You can choose how the notification when standard violation occurs, and you can choose to automatically fix the errors in CAD Standard settings.
You can check four standards: Dimension styles, Layers, Line types, and Text styles.
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You can fix it by click Run Check Standards in the balloon. Alternatively, click check on your ribbon, manage tab, CAD Standards panel.
AutoCAD will offer you to change the layer to a standard layer available. Select the layer, then click fix button to replace the non-standard layer. Chapter: CAD Standard Edwin Prakoso www.cad-notes.com
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EXTRACTING BLOCKS
We can extract any kind of data from AutoCAD. However, it would only make sense if we give the objects a name. For example, you want to know how many desks in a building. If you define the desk as a block, and give the block name as the desk name, you can extract a schedule from them. In the example below, you can see the extraction of dynamic block parameter.
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You can read the data extraction tutorial on my blog: Creating Schedule from Your AutoCAD Drawing. You will create a door schedule, a column schedule, and a wall schedule.
This is an example for extracting coordinate data from our drawing. We can define layer names as pipe or cable diameters. In addition, extract where the start and end point of that pipe.
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LAYER FILTER
You can avoid users to create their own layer by creating templates and CAD Standards. However, the users might still complain that they see too many layers. You can create layer filters and show only layers they need.
You can create several layer filters that only show layers they need in layer manager. This is also a good reason why you should implement layer-naming standards. For example, if you create naming convention like A-Wall. A is for architecture drawing, and wall is for object type. You can then set the filter to show all architectural layers by adding wildcard after A: A* to layer name. You can also add more conditional for other properties.
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My favorite is using this feature to create different views: high details, and low details. Sometimes we need to plot the same drawing in different scales. In high details drawing (relatively small scale), I turn on every layers. In low details, I hide some layers. Patterns are the good example for this. When we plot in very large scale, pattern looks just like solid line. Therefore, I freeze it.
You can read the details here: Creating different drawing representation.
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VP stands for viewport. Since AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD allow us to override layer inside a viewport. And it wont affect other viewport. It means that we can represent our drawing differently in each viewport. Like my example before, drawing details. You may freeze layers in large-scale viewport, but show them in small scale viewport. And you can apply layer states inside a viewport too.
This is how sheet set manager looks like. While a sheet set contain all information of a project, you can create subsets for different disciplines or category. You can put sheets inside a sheet set, or inside a subset. Just like managing your files inside a folder. Chapter: Documents Management Edwin Prakoso www.cad-notes.com
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But instead of seeing a lot of files, you can put only sheets that is used in your project. There are a lot of advantages you can get if you are using sheet set.
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Remember to place them in your template. Usually we put them in title block in your layout.
SHEET LIST TABLE You can have hundreds of drawings in a major project. Creating a sheet list can take a lot of time. Not to mention typo errors. And when you add or remove some sheets, you need to update it manually. By using sheet set, we can generate sheet list table automatically. You can generate it for the whole project, or for drawings in a subset.
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Managing sheets with SheetSet can give you advantage in plotting and sending your files. I remember there was an old tool named batch plot for Autodesk Subscription Customers. But I think its no longer available. You can use publish feature in SheetSet to batch plot your sheets. You can also pack all your files in a project to send them to your colleague or to building owner.
PUBLISH
Publish a SheetSet or subset in very simple. Simply right click on sheet set or sub set, select publish by your plotter type. For more control, you can select publish dialog box.
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ETRANSMIT
Are you already familiar with eTransmit? One of the common thing I had is, sometimes there are files left behind when I send them to our partner. ETransmit will pack all my files, includes xrefs, fonts, plot styles, and all other dependant files. With SheetSet, we can pack all of our files in a project just with a view clicks. Snipped from help file: Chapter: Documents Management With eTransmit, you can package a set of files for Internet transmission. Drawing files in the transmittal package automatically include all related dependent files such as xrefs and font files. A common problem when sending drawing files to someone is neglecting to include related dependent files such as xrefs and text fonts. In some cases, not including these files can make the drawing files unusable by the recipient. With eTransmit, dependent files are included automatically in the transmittal package, reducing the possibility of error. You can configure the transmittal to be packed in zip files, save them to old version of AutoCAD before packed, et cetera.
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